John 1:1-18
The Word Becomes Flesh
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning. 3 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. 4 In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
6 There was a man sent from God whose name was John. 7 He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all might believe.8 He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light.
9 The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world. 10 He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. 11 He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. 12 Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— 13 children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.
14 The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
15 (John testified concerning him. He cried out, saying, “This is the one I spoke about when I said, ‘He who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.’”) 16 Out of his fullness we have all received grace in place of grace already given. 17 For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. 18 No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known.
When I read the first chapter of St. John's Gospel and often think "How can this be?"...The Word was with God in the beginning...These words are a direct and purposely echoing of Genesis...There is One who came from our Father in heaven, and this Word became flesh and this Word became God...This Word, this Flesh, this Man came to dwell among us...
J. R. R. Tolkien, the author of LORD of the Rings, and C. S Lewis were good friends...For a long time Lewis had been an atheist...Lewis also was one who was very well read and understood myths...Tolkien over the years told Lewis in every myth there is some sort of factual information...Tolkien thought the old writers of myths had put an underlying truth in them...And he tried to convince Lewis of this as Lewis read different mythical writings...That in all these old stories and myths their might exist some fact or piece of truth...Tolkien thought that the four gospels were not only great stories of a Great Man, but pointed to an underlying Reality of a Real Man...The story is more than just a passing myth or about a passing Legend...It is a real story about a Real Man...There is great evidence that in Jesus' life and even after His death and His resurrection this Real Story never passed or went away...There is great evidence that there was this Man named Jesus and His divinity can be traced throughout the writings of antiquity and the last two thousand years...His birth and life are etched into the very pages of the New Testament...With all this and the stories surrounding this Man from Galilee, something clearly happened in Jerusalem, and the story has remained with us throughout history...And Tolkien thought that the most logical thing we could do was believe the gospel stories not as myth, but as actual history about a Man...The story is not a passing story, but one that will remain forever with us, because these things really happened...There was no story like this story, because there never was a Man like the One in the gospels...
We learn from Tolkien and Lewis that a few, if not many of the old myths are based on some sort of truth, or has at least some truth in it (the myth)...But because myths contain so much fiction and some, if not many, exaggerations people have trouble finding any truth in the stories...Some people do not want to find any truths, at all, in mythical stories...And by not seeing or looking for any truth at all in myths and things, some truths can be missed...Believers, on the other hand, often see God in everything, because He created everything, and all things are made through Jesus...
Lewis the great student on myths said this about the gospels, "I was by now too experienced in literary criticism to regard the Gospels as myths...They had not the mythical taste...And yet the very matter which they set down in their artless, historical fashion — those narrow, unattractive Jews, too blind to the mystical wealth of the Pagan world around them — was precisely the matter of great myths...If ever a myth had become a fact, had been incarnated, it would be just like this...And nothing else in all literature was just like this...Myths were like it in one way...Histories were like it in another, but nothing was simply alike...And no person was like the Person it depicted; as real, as recognizable, through all that depth of time...yet also so luminous, lit by a light from beyond the world, a god...But if a god — we are no longer polytheists — then not a god, but God...Here and here only in all time the myth must have become fact; the Word, flesh; God, Man. This is not "a religion," nor "a philosophy." It is the summing up and actuality of them all."...
The Word became Flesh and dwelt among us...We read the stories and while some during His time have seen His glory, we have the good pleasure to read about His glory...